


i've a rash shaped awfully like you

by duravis



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kissing, M/M, Post-Time Skip, Quarantine, for like 2 lines let me keep the T rating ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24676435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duravis/pseuds/duravis
Summary: Atsumu cuts Kiyoomi's hair. It is long overdue.Kiyoomi reassures him that everything is going to be okay. It is timeless.(Or, how two people with a limited understanding of feelings practice navigating them within their four walls.)
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 10
Kudos: 205





	i've a rash shaped awfully like you

**Author's Note:**

> please excuse the terrible atsumu characterization in my last fic. in order to make up for it, i shall give u vastly different but equally terrible atsumu characterization in this one. 
> 
> enjoy<3

“ _Ow_ – Shit, are you trying to cut my ear off?”

“Tch. I told ya to hold still. ‘S not my fault if ya end up lookin’ like Van Gogh once I’m done.”

“What. Of course that would be your fault. How would that not be your fault.”

Atsumu whacks him swiftly across the back of his head. Kiyoomi sighs. The sound falls flat, likely having been absorbed into the walls of his four-foot wide kitchen.

“This is domestic abuse.”

“Awww, are ya sayin’ we’re domestic then, Omi-kun?”

“You don’t listen to anything I say, do you?”

Atsumu hums, then the sound of scissors snipping wildly at his hair fills their apartment once again.

_Domestic. Is that what this is?_

“’M so jealous, Omi-kun. Yer hair’s so naturally curly.”

Kiyoomi inherited his curls from his mother, whose head could be described as an unruly, pitch black bird’s nest, if you’re feeling generous. Atsumu has yet to meet her. He’s lucky that some of his father’s straight-haired genes saved him from the fate of having to untangle it for an hour every morning. Atsumu’s yet to meet him, too.

Kiyoomi wishes his brain would stop trying to imagine what it would be like if Atsumu were to meet either of his parents. He can’t fathom a single universe where that would ever go well.

“Well, it’ll all be gone if you keep trying to cut my hair down to my scalp.”

“Shaddup! ‘M not doin’ that, like, at all,” he retorts, just as the snipping gets more aggressive. “I know what ‘m doin’ here.”

“Do you now.”

“Yea, yea, I do. Now just fuckin’, sit still and let me work my magic.”

Kiyoomi huffs with the amusement that only someone fluent in Sakusa Kiyoomi would be able to detect. Atsumu tilts his head for easier access. “Roger that.”

The cutting resumes, sporadically slowing to a stop every few minutes so that Atsumu can gaze at the big picture that is Kiyoomi’s wet poodle. Occasionally he’ll spray his hair with a bottle filled with water. This is Kiyoomi’s least favorite part. Occasionally he’ll run his hands through his hair, tousling it around and parting it with his fingers, all while applying just the lightest touch of pressure to his scalp. Kiyoomi can’t say he hates this part all that much.

“Where’d you learn to cut hair?” He asks.

Atsumu stills. He takes a deep breath, and Kiyoomi is momentarily worried that he had said something wrong, but Atsumu just snaps the scissors in the air a few times before getting back to work.

“My ma was a hairdresser. Well, she was still gettin’ the hang of it when I was in high school, really. Hence why I was in desperate need of some toner back then, hah.

“She was real good at cuttin’ it, though. Did me and Samu’s fringes. Styled it for most the people on our block, too. Not for free, or anythin’– money don’ grow on trees– but always discounted.

“She actually. Uhm, she– She styled it this way on one of the days I went an’ visited her in the hospital, ya know? So I kept it like that ever since. But the, er, waves never turn out all good like she made em’, though,” Atsumu concludes. Kiyoomi notices that he wrinkled his nose a couple of times as he spoke, and that his hands had begun to shake.

He reaches up and takes Atsumu’s hand–the one not holding the scissors–and rests it over his shoulder with his own blanketing it. He rubs his thumb across the ridges of Atsumu’s knuckles.

Atsumu laughs awkwardly. It’s wet. “’M sorry, I–”

“Don’t be,” Kiyoomi interrupts. “She sounds like she was a wonderful woman.”

“Mm,” Atsumu hums. He nestles his face down into the backside of Kiyoomi’s head, breathing deeply into his hair. Kiyoomi would normally be put off by Atsumu doing something like this. He finds that right now, he doesn’t mind as much as he thought he would. “That she was.”

Eventually, after a period of time that Kiyoomi can’t decipher if it was mere seconds or multiple hours, Atsumu lifts his head. He cracks a lazy grin. “’M done.”

“Oh,” Kiyoomi replies. “Can I see?”

“Yea, yea, ‘f course.”

Atsumu brings him a hand mirror with a lavender rim and handle. Kiyoomi inspects the damage, which, surprisingly, doesn’t turn out to look very damaged at all.

It’s shorter, but that is a given after receiving a haircut. It had grown out far too long and wild for his liking in these past few weeks. He thinks it’s a bit shorter than it was before they started sheltering-in-place, but he isn’t 100% certain. He just doesn’t remember seeing the left side of his forehead as much as he is seeing it now.

Atsumu, ever the mind-reader, picks up on this. He twirls Kiyoomi’s bit of bangs between his fingers. “Wanted to keep it out of yer eyes,” he notes. “Looks good, yea?”

Kiyoomi pushes Atsumu’s hand out of the way and fiddles a bit with the piece of hair, inspiring a snort from the latter. “Yeesh, ya get on me for obsessing over my appearance, but yer just as bad.”

Kiyoomi ignores him. “It looks good,” he affirms.

“Damn straight,” Atsumu replies, undoing the clasp on the shower curtain draped across Kiyoomi’s shoulders. “I can sweep. You go wash the clippings outta yer hair.”

“You sure?”

“Yea, yea,” he says, waving him off. “But ya gotta help me bleach mine later.”

Kiyoomi knew there was a catch. There always is when your boyfriend is a bastard. “No way.”

“Whaat. Yer always cleaning with bleach anyway. How is this any different, huh?”

“I would fry the hair off your scalp,” Kiyoomi states.

At this point Atsumu is forcefully ushering him toward the bathroom. “Well, I reckon I’d look okay bald, wouldn’t I?”

Kiyoomi pushes back against him. He’s probably stronger, but his boyfriend’s ferocious competitiveness seems to give him a power-up, much to his inconvenience. “No, you would, _ugh_ , not.”

Atsumu stumbles briefly, but continues propelling him forward. “I mean– I’ll probably… End up that way anyway, with my, _eughf_ , unfortunate genes… An’ all–”

“Atsumu.”

They both still. Kiyoomi takes hold of Atsumu’s wrists. He doesn’t meet Kiyoomi’s eyes, but he can still see the grave look in them.

Then, as quickly as they both fell silent, the rest of his face crumples. Kiyoomi can’t stand it. He wants to reach out and smooth over ever single crease with the pads of his fingers. But then Atsumu is speaking again and Kiyoomi’s discomfort only deepens.

“You’d take care of me, right? If I… If I ended up like that, too? All pale an’ sick an’ weak an’ shit?”

Kiyoomi grips his arms, which have started to quiver again. He looks right at him even if Atsumu is looking everywhere else. “Of course. Of course I would, idiot,” he assures, the words barely above a whisper.

“And so would your brother. And the rest of our team. And Kita Shinsuke. And everybody else. Of course we would.”

Atsumu closes his eyes.

He takes a breath.

Then, he smiles.

The wrinkles above his mouth are the kind that Kiyoomi can make peace with. They’re unbalanced— more condensed on the left side than the right– but that’s just how his smiles tend to burgeon.

“Yea. Yea, yer right," he says, then: "Thank you.”

Kiyoomi frowns. “Why are you thanking me. None of this has actually happened. Nor will it ever.”

He shakes his head. “No, no, I mean. Thank you for lettin’ me stay here. With ya. Prolly would go crazy if I was left to my own devices, aha…”

 _So you’re making me go crazy instead,_ Kiyoomi surmises.

He doesn’t say this, however; he bites his lip and mutters, “Just don’t fucking get COVID-19, okay? That would be a very different story.”

Atsumu chuckles. “Aww, Omi-kun, ya don’ wanna make out wit yer virus-infected boyfriend?” He teases, after freeing himself from Kiyoomi’s grip (which, for the record, he wasn’t paying attention to, or else he definitely would’ve prevented this) and placing his hands firmly on his boyfriend’s hips.

Kiyoomi flinches as he feels warm, hope-to-god _not_ virus-infected breath on his face. “No, I really would rather not, actua–”

But Atsumu’s already crowding in on him like the touchy fiend he is, and Kiyoomi has no choice but to groan his complaints into the kiss. He tastes like the leftover bento they had for lunch. It’s gross. Kiyoomi mentally drafts a new courtship law banning the act of kissing if one party has not brushed their teeth in multiple hours.

“You’re disgusting.”

“Mm, you love me, thou–”

Atsumu freezes the same time Kiyoomi does.

“Sorry. I mean. I shouldn’t have said– I don’t want you to–”

“It’s fine,” Kiyoomi interjects. “You. You can say that.”

“…Yer sure?”

Kiyoomi nods.

Atsumu grins.

He looks like a troll. Or maybe an ogre. A handsome one, sure, but one that still can’t shake off the bold and brash features of its species. Kiyoomi wonders how and why he ever ended up dating a handsome trollgre.

But Atsumu’s always been the itch Kiyoomi could never scratch, from their first face-off as teenagers at Nationals, to their easy partnership as professional players in MSBY, and now to… Whatever this is.

 _Domestic_ , his traitorous mind recalls from their earlier conversation. _I suppose that's what this is, now._

 _I hope it lasts_ , he can’t help but think.

“–llo? Earth ta ‘Omi?”

His mind climbs down from the realm of critical thought and settles itself back into the private, pocket dimension of their apartment.

“Hm?”

“D’ya wanna. Ya know.”

“I don’t know.”

Except Atsumu actually leers at him, and there’s no decent way to interpret that look.

“Ya know?” He nudges.

Kiyoomi stares back, unimpressed.

“I’ll get ya off if ya help me bleach my roots.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Yea, but you love me.” And neither of them pause to discuss the matter, not anymore.

Kiyoomi still needs to wash the loose strands out of his hair and Atsumu still needs to sweep the kitchen floor, but they are actively putting a hold on those items to indulge in activities that will probably get hair trimmings all over their bedsheets. Atsumu will then probably be forced to put them in the wash. They will go to bed later tonight and the clean smell will lull them to sleep until the early afternoon.

Tomorrow, Kiyoomi will help bleach Atsumu’s hair. It will be a nightmare.

Eventually, Kiyoomi will introduce Atsumu to his parents. That will go similarly terrible. Kiyoomi will also meet Atsumu’s mother. He will place chrysanthemums at her grave.

Everything that comes after that is far too distant, far too unclear to tell. But Kiyoomi knows that those days will be spent beside Atsumu, as well.

The itch that Atsumu has plagued him with will get worse with time. It will grow painful, maddening, almost too agonizing to bear. But one day, the rash will disappear and it will do so seemingly overnight. Kiyoomi will wake to discover, as it lay unmoving on his pillow, that it had only been the bright red petal of a camellia all along.

Eventually, Kiyoomi will use his own voice and his own words to tell Atsumu that he loves him.

Never, will Kiyoomi get the word–the concept–of _domestic_ out of his head.

(How could he, after spending the rest of his life letting only Atsumu cut his hair.)

**Author's Note:**

> tbh didn't plan for any of the angst that was in this i just wanted to write sumn short regarding sakuatsu quarantine haircuts. but alas i am but a slave to my cruel, cruel hands who like to torment miya atsumu. was a happy ending tho. they got their partnership certificates in osaka. they became old men somewhere along the line. the thought makes me happy. i hope it makes you happy, too.
> 
> tumblr: tatakaedrey  
> twitter (danger zone): glocksgenya


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